Intel's transition from 22nm to 14nm, with out-of-order architecture better known as Atom, was not a walk in the park.

Intel had to delay its next generation Atom out-of-order architecture codenamed Braswell all the way to Q3 2015 and, at that time, we expect to see the Braswell-based Pentium N3700 replacing the Bay-Trail-M BGA based N3540. Last time we mentioned Braswell, the processor was delayed to Q2 2015 and now it slipped an additional quarter.

The Pentium N3700 is 14nm quad core clocked at 1.6GHz, with the ability to jump all the way to 2.4GHz. The Bay Trail-M based Pentium N3540 is clocked at 2.16GHz base clock and 2.66GHz Turbo.

As you can see, Braswell 14nm has a significantly lower clock and Turbo at a 6W TDP (Thermal Design Power) and 4W Scenario Design Power (SDP). Pentium N3640 Bay Trail has a 7.5W TDP and 3.5W SPD, so the TDP went significantly down but the SDP went up, just barely.

The Intel HD Graphics core also works at 400MHz base and 700MHz maximum frequency on the Braswell Pentium N3700, which is slower than the N3540 with its 313MHz base and 896MHz Turbo clock.

The Pentium N3700 supports DDR3L 1600 MHz memory, has 2MB cache and it comes in BGA packaging. The good news is that the new platform supports Chrome, Linux, Windows 7 64-bit only as well as Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 64-bit only.

There will be a few other Braswell 14nm dual- and quad-core processors that will end up branded as Celerons. The Atom brand name is gone in the notebook / Chromebook market.

We have reported that Kaveri gets a desktop refresh but apparently due to ambient noise at the noisy CES, we didn’t catch the right name.

The processor codename is Godavari, again a river in India. In case you didn’t know Kaveri is also a river in India.

The new desktop refresh according to SweClockers is going to end up with A10-8850K branding. The new processor will get a 100MHz faster turbo clock and is based on the same 28nm manufacturing process. The base CPU clock for the A10-8850K is 3.7GHz, the same speed as the AMD A10-7850K, but the Turbo clock will jump to 4.1GHz with the new one. The A10-7850K has 4.0 GHz top turbo clock and 720 MHz GPU speed for its GCN Sea Island GPU.

The new A10-8850K will get the GPU to 856MHz. The memory speed supported stays at 2133MHz and the socket of choice remains FM2+. The TDP stays at 95W.

As you can see this is a small evolution and you can expect some cool parts for AMD on the desktop side in the latter part of 2016, some eighteen months from now, in 14nm.

AMD plans to retire quite a few Zambezi desktop FX cores and replace them with superior Vishera cores. The transition is already happening in Q4 2012 and it will be complete next year.

As we reported here, AMD plans to retire FX 8150 eight-core, FX 6200 six-core and FX 4170 quad-core chips in Q1 2013 and it plans to retire an additional four processors in the following quarter. The AMD FX 8120, a 3.1GHz octa-core with turbo capability of 4GHz, 125W and 7MB of cache, retires in Q2 2013. AMD also plans to retire the six-core FX 6100 clocked at 3.3GHz to 3.9GHz with turbo, at 95W TDP.

Not even quad-cores will be spared as FX 4130 with 3.8 to 3.9GHz clock, four cores, 4MB cache and 125W TDP as well as the FX 4100 with 3.6GHz to 3.8GHz with turbo, will reach its end of life in Q2 2013.

They all get replaced by FX 8350 and FX 8320 in the eight-core 125W market, FX 6300 in 95W six core market and FX 4300 in 95W quad-core market that are available since late October.

It appears that information on Sony’s next gen tablet found its way out and if the slides leaked by German site mobiflip.de are correct, we're looking at a leaner and meaner successor to the S model.

The tablet is 8.8mm thick, which is as much as 42 percent thinner than its predecessor. Although the slides suggest an aluminum body and tougher design, Sony still managed to keep some recognizable design traits of the original S.

Among the things Sony kept are the display size of 9.4 inches and the same 1280x800 resolution. However, the new Xperia tablet will boast a quad core Tegra 3, a step up from the old dual-core Tegra 2 on the S.

The tablet will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or above. It will have a 6000mAh battery supposedly good for up to 10 hours. Sony will offer Wi-Fi only and 3G models. 16GB version is expected at $450; 32GB at $550 while 64GB models will sell for $650.

As you'll see from the slides, Sony is also planning with a rich offer of accessories, including the pretty neat keyboard/stand. Talk about scratching the Surface, eh?

Following its dual-core Cortex A15 design, ARM has now announced its newest quad-core Cortex-A15 MP4 Hard Macro processor.

Based on the new 28nm architecture the quad-core Cortex-A15 will carry the "hard macro" brand, which means that it will have fixed specifications, thus enabling manufacturers to bring products to market more quickly and at a lower cost.

On the technical side, the new quad-core Cortex-A15 MP4 works at 2GHz, provides performance of over 20,000 DMIPS and includes Neon and FPU technology, ECC for L1 and L2 RAMs, 2x32KB L1 and 2MB of L2 cache. You can check out more about the features over at ARM blog.

The good side of the story is that ARM managed to provide additional performance while staying within the power consumption envelope of the Cortex-A9 hard macro processor, thanks to the 28nm process.

Thanks to, what ARM calls, extremely competitive balance of performance and power, ARM believes that this one could end up to be a perfect choice for notebooks as well as extreme performance-oriented network and enterprise devices.

ARM plans to unveil the full configuration and implementation details at the Cool Chips conference that will be held on 18th of April in Yokohama, Japan.

Huawei appears to be quite confident in its new quad-core K3V2 chip based on four ARM Cortex A9 cores and can be clocked at either 1.2 or 1.5GHz. The story gets a bit better as Huawei went on and compared its K3V2 against 4-PLUS-1 Tegra 3 chip in Transformer Prime as well as TI OMAP 4460 1.2GHz dual-core part inside Samsung Galaxy Nexus and came out on top.

In addition to the four ARM Cortex A9 cores, the new Huawei K3V2 chip also comes with 16 GPUs. Unfortunately, Huawei wasn't specific regarding the GPU inside the K3V2 but it did claim that K3V2 is currently the fastest quad-core on the market with lowest chip temperature in smallest package.

Apparently, the secret behind the K3V2 is actually its 64-bit memory controller as opposed to the 32-bit one on Tegra 3. According to Huawei's slides it ends up 49 percent faster in normal operation and in Quadrant Advanced, Antutu and Coremark benchmarks it pull ahead of Nvidia's Tegra 3. In GPU Basemark ES 2.0-Taiji and Nenamark, the K3V2 with its "16 GPUs" again moves ahead of Tegra 3.

Huawei didn't stop there as the actual lowest temperature is connected to low power consumption, another ace inside Huawei's pocket. The low power consumption is apparently achieved thanks to hardware, proprietary algorithms and faster signal detection that reduces power consumption.

Of course, we are talking about Huawei slides here but it still looks impressive. The K3V2 is apparently made at 40nm at TSMC which makes it quite similar to the Tegra 3, but of course 28nm Qualcomm and TI chips are pretty much just around the corner and we guess that Huawei's lead won't last for long.

We certainly look forward to see more about this chip as Huawei certantly shaked things up at MWC 2012.

Despite the fact that Galaxy S III won't be officially showcased at this year Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it appears that Samsung still want to show off some interesting things including the quad-core Exynos 4412 SoC chip.

According to previous reports, the Exynos 4412 packs four AMR Cortex-A9 cores that run anywhere between 200MHz and 1.5GHz as well as four ARM Mali graphics cores, 64-bit Neon media engine and support for LP-DDR2, DDR2 and DDR3 memory via dual-channel memory controller. Samsung also claims that Exynos 4412 packs enough punch to support a smartphone with integrated projector and fullHD 3D display.

In addition to the Exynos 4412, Samsung will most probably shed some light on its dual-core 2GHz clocked Exynos 5250 SoC chip that is capable of pumping out WQXGA 2560x1600 resolution. The Exynos 5250 is based on ARM Cortex-A15 cores and has four times higher 3D processing power compared to previous chips as well as native support for stereoscopic 3D.

The absence of Galaxy S III smartphone is certainly a big deal but Samsung will still be the one to look out for during Mobile World Congress.

We can remember that Nvidia was persistent at the Kal El announcement that the devices will hit retail as soon as August. Our Far East sources are quite confident that this won’t happen and that it will launch at later date, probably when it gets colder in the northern hemisphere.

Nvidia doesn’t want to talk about Kal-El, but it did release some basic specification back in January, but at this time, it is not ready to share more. Some more Tegra 2 devices will launch before the end of the year and Kal-El a chip that might end up as Tegra 3, should also come soon, just not in August.

Different sources suggested that Kal-El definitely comes in Q3 2011 that for the normal world ends with September 30th, but have in mind that Nvidia’s Q3 ends more month later. This can give us some ideas about the latest possible launch date. One thing is certain, the launch date should happen much before Thanksgiving and the rest of the shopping spree to follow.

This week has definitely been kind to us when it comes to the future of phone / tablet chips. We have found out that Nvidia’s Kal El might be the only 40nm quad core in the market.

The rest of the phone elite will wait for 28nm to do the quad core, as the thermals go down significantly and two Cortex A15 cores can end up faster than four Cortex A9 40 / 45nm cores. So far Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and the rest of the phone / tablet chip manufacturers, including Samsung and Apple haven’t announced any Quad core Cortex A9 based 40 or 45nm quad chip.

Nvidia is expected to ship its Kal-El and have it in designs in Q3 2011 or this current quarter. Most of the big chip manufacturers will have to wait for 28nm to make its chip. Our sources have indicated that Kal-El might be the biggest chip for tablets / phones so far, as it ends significantly bigger than Tegra 2. Tegra 2 should be some 49 sq mm while Kal El was reported to be close to 80 sq mm.

Quad cores based on A15 should probably end up much closer to these 49 sq millimetre, but A15 28nm Quads will only ship at some point of 2012, most likely the second part of it. TI already said it will only happen with retail present of actually products in fall 2012 for OMAP 5.

Looks like Nvidia will be only quad core mobile solution in town for 2011 and at least some manufacturers will have devices available before this Thanksgiving and Xmas.

Intel simply doesn’t want to go over the 4GHz mark, not even with its Sandy Bridge E upcoming high performance CPUs. The six core version clocked at 3.3GHz can natively get to 3.9GHz with turbo overclocking and it looks like the four core version shares the same fate.

The main difference is that the quad core Sandy Bridge E comes with a native clock of quite high 3.6GHz, the fastest we've seen so far and a single core can get to 3.9GHz with a little turbo automatic overclocking assistance.

The quad core Sandy Bridge E has eight tread support, works with 1066 and 1333DDR3 memory and has the expected 130W TDP. Let’s not forget the four way memory support, again a first for Intel's high end products. Sandy Bridge E quad core is still a 32nm product.

We are pretty sure that overclockers will exceed 4GHz with ease and overclockers are indeed the target audience. Naturally, they'll need to reach deep inot their pocket as Enthusiast class CPUs from Intel usually cost an arm and leg.

A very important detail - Sandy Bridge E has no integrated graphics like the rest of Sandy Bridge family.